Journal
ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES
Volume 13, Issue 14, Pages 16906-16915Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c02252
Keywords
lithium recovery; Cu-MPD; nanofiltration; high permeance and high selectivity; pH-responsive; antimicrobial properties
Funding
- General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [17204220]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [22076075]
- Centers for Mechanical Engineering Research and Education at MIT and SUSTech (MechERE Centers at MIT and SUSTech)
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The study developed a nonpolyamide nanofiltration membrane based on a metal-coordinated structure, demonstrating simultaneously improved water permeance and Li+/Mg2+ selectivity, surpassing the trade-off of permeance selectivity of traditional membranes. The novel membrane also exhibited enhanced anti-biofouling property and pH-responsive characteristics, providing an exciting approach for fabricating high-performance nanofiltration membranes in lithium recovery applications.
Nanofiltration (NF) with high water flux and precise separation performance with high Li+/Mg2+ selectivity is ideal for lithium brine recovery. However, conventional polyamide-based commercial NF membranes are ineffective in lithium recovery processes due to their undesired Li+/Mg2+ selectivity. In addition, they are constrained by the water permeance selectivity trade-off, which means that a highly permeable membrane often has lower selectivity. In this study, we developed a novel nonpolyamide NF membrane based on metal-coordinated structure, which exhibits simultaneously improved water permeance and Li+/Mg2+ selectivity. Specifically, the optimized Cu-m-phenylenediamine (MPD) membrane demonstrated a high water permeance of 16.2 +/- 2.7 LMH/bar and a high Li+/Mg2+ selectivity of 8.0 +/- 1.0, which surpassed the trade-off of permeance selectivity. Meanwhile, the existence of copper in the Cu-MPD membrane further enhanced anti-biofouling property and the metal-coordinated nanofiltration membrane possesses a pH-responsive property. Finally, a transport model based on the Nernst-Planck equations has been developed to fit the water flux and rejection of uncharged solutes to the experiments conducted. The model had a deviation below 2% for all experiments performed and suggested an average pore radius of 1.25 nm with a porosity of 21% for the Cu-MPD membrane. Overall, our study provides an exciting approach for fabricating a nonpolyamide high-performance nanofiltration membrane in the context of lithium recovery.
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